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At its core, Ruthless Bastards delivers what it promises: a gritty, under-the-gun, buddy-crime thriller built on betrayal, uneasy alliances, and rough justice. Director Bruce Fontaine leans into classic noir-style crime tropes, offering a story about two former hitmen, Nico (Casper Van Dien) and Rick “Breaker” Hart (Sean Patrick Flanery) forced back into action for one final job against a rising crime boss with a personal history.

What makes the film worth watching and what carries it beyond its limitations is the chemistry between Van Dien and Flanery. Their uneasy camaraderie, simmering tension, and past trauma give the movie a beating heart. As Nico and Rick, they don’t just deliver lines: there’s an easy back and forth that demonstrates decades of shared history, broken loyalties, and deep personal stakes. It feels born from the kind of natural rapport you only get when actors lean into their roles and riff off each other’s energy.

This leads to a natural comparison to other great films of the action genre but there is one movie that stood out to me a mile away. The Debt Collector movies from 2018 and 2020 respectively starring Scott Adkins and Louis Mandylor. I would be extremely surprised to learn that this movie wasn’t in any way inspired by Jesse V. Johnson’s work. Where that film tells the story of a new hire being teamed up with an aging pro, Ruthless Bastards instead gives us two aging pros who already have history as a dynamic duo. Indeed, much of the tension here stems from the fact that this duo stopped working together some time before the events of the film and now they need to reunite to settle a personal score of both themselves and their longtime employer. That said there is also comedy to be found in the two men bonding over the plights of aging, a moment that stuck with me after the credits roll was with the two of them debating what ached more, lower back or shoulders.

Nico and Rick couldn’t be further apart in both style and approach when it comes to how they operate. Nico is clean, efficient and methodical whereas Rick is spontaneous, messy and more prone to brutality to get the job done. Seeing Sean and Casper be professionals at work to old friends getting to spend time together is genuinely heartwarming right up till the point that the reason they stopped being friends comes back into their minds, and you can see the light fade from their eyes as any sense of joy is cast out. For anyone who’s ever had a long-term friendship turn bad or struggle to reconcile after a horrible event you will likely feel your heartstrings getting tugged at as I did.

Parmish Verma plays the unscrupulous crime lord Sunny Gill. Sunny is the main antagonist of the film and represents the threat that our two veterans need to take down. He represents more than just a villain of the week; however, Sunny is the next generation of criminal looking to take over from the old guard. You could even say he learned the ropes under the tutelage of our duo. Meanwhile Hasleen Kaur plays Ishanna Sidhu and proves herself a standout. When the film leans into her confrontation scenes, she rises, shaking off the expectation that female supporting characters get sidelined in action-thrillers. She is essentially Sunny’s enforcer and it’s a job she clearly enjoys, getting one of the genuine standout fight sequences in the movie setting up how much of an obstacle she’s going to be later in the film

That said where Ruthless Bastards shows ambition, it also reveals its limits. The Russian mobsters and associated gangster elements often come off as generic broadly painted villains without the same depth or charisma as the rest of the cast. They exist more as structural obstacles than as memorable characters in their own right; their clashes with the Triad hint at something larger but they don’t linger in memory after the credits roll. Unlike the Triad members themselves who get some moments of comedy as they are also old veteran of this criminal underworld and have established relationships with our leads.

The biggest weakness is the film’s action itself. For a movie stacked with capable actors and promising antagonists, the fight choreography and action sequences are only functional rather than fantastic. In a film with such investment in character, chemistry, and criminal underworld tension, you can’t help but wish the fight scenes had the same spark as the interpersonal drama. Casper Van Dien feels underused for most of the movie his Nico character having some great subplots that are not fully explored or not given the time/depth needed to flesh him out. This wouldn’t have bothered me anywhere near as much if we were seeing Casper get to show off his to often overlooked martial art abilities but sadly even in the films biggest sequences it is not to be.

In the end, Ruthless Bastards works best when it leans on its strengths the tension between Nico and Rick, the charismatic antagonists Sunny Gill and Ishanna Sidhu, the overarching theme of getting older and knowing if it’s time to hang up your boots. When it tries to deliver big set piece fights or grandiose gangster showdowns, it often falls short. But if you’re in it for character driven crime thrills, moral ambiguity, and the uneasy partnership of two flawed men then there’s more than enough here to keep you interested.

I hope that this movie does well because there is a lot to like here and I feel like there is opportunity here for a sequel to expound on the foundation that has been laid here. Sean and Casper are both likeable in these roles and the world itself has both great supporting characters and a ton of room to bring in more players. Combine that potential with bigger fight scenes and I think it would move from a decent project to a genuine action great.

The movie is available now digitally in the U.S.